Crossing The Border

Crossing Over is a multi-character canvas about immigrants of different nationalities struggling to achieve legal status in Los Angeles. The film deals with the border, document fraud, the asylum and green card process, work-site enforcement, naturalization, the office of counter terrorism and the clash of cultures.

Crossing Over is a multi-character canvas about immigrants of different nationalities struggling to achieve legal status in Los Angeles. The film deals with the border, document fraud, the asylum and green card process, work-site enforcement, naturalization, the office of counter terrorism and the clash of cultures.

When Kapka Kassabova was a child, the borderzone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece was rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall so it swarmed with soldiers, spies and fugitives. On holidays close to the border on the Black Sea coast, she remembers playing on the beach, only miles from where an electrified fence bristled, its barbs pointing inwards toward the enemy: the holiday-makers, the potential escapees.

National Geographic goes beyond the controversy and political wrangling of illegal immigration to see the real-world battles being waged by the men and women responsible for securing our borders. Every day, they intercept an illicit flow of narcotics, money and weapons headed both north and south across the border. The risks have never been higher, with the violence of the Mexican drug wars a stone's throw from U.S. soil and criminals armed with increasingly sophisticated technology challenging the most rigorous countermeasures.

National Geographic goes beyond the controversy and political wrangling of illegal immigration to see the real-world battles being waged by the men and women responsible for securing our borders. Every day, they intercept an illicit flow of narcotics, money and weapons headed both north and south across the border. The risks have never been higher, with the violence of the Mexican drug wars a stone's throw from U.S. soil and criminals armed with increasingly sophisticated technology challenging the most rigorous countermeasures.